


Turn Your Frown Upside Down

by fyredancer



Category: Tokio Hotel
Genre: Angst, Drama, First Time, M/M, Masturbation, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 07:45:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/684528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fyredancer/pseuds/fyredancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most of the time, real life doesn't come with a happy ending. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waking

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to tokiobillhotel for the lovely, timely banner, to kishmet for making *__* eyes at me, and ma_chelle for callin' it good. :D

Tom keeps his head burrowed against the poofy bulk of white pillows as Bill rises from the bed, leaving behind the delectable smells of sun-warmed skin and a vague lingering peachy scent and an aftertaste of hairspray. Bill is silhouetted in the light that makes its way through the blinds, past the curtains, filling the room with illumination like a wavering bowl overspilling with incorporeal water. Tom watches through his lashes as Bill picks the seam of his boxers out of his rear, dogs tumble off the bed in sleepy but loyal pursuit, and the door to the hall swings open. He keeps up the facade of sleep until Bill is out of sight, lying crumpled on one side as though out of it.

Once Bill is down the hall, it's safe.

Loosing a breath that is more sigh than anything, Tom rolls onto his back to eye the dappled scrim of leaves painted in gilt and shadow over his ceiling. He waits, counting heartbeats. He has it down to an exact measure and holds his breath as the molten hiss of shower spray against tile starts up in the distance.

As Tom shoves a hand down his boxers, a moan pries free of his throat. His cock hardens instantly, nuzzling into his hand. He's been waiting, listening to the stir of even breathing shift to shallow, more wakeful patterns, stacked side to back with Bill in his bed for what seems like hours. With dogs draped at their feet and sides, the twins sleep piled together in the center of Tom's huge bed. Tom's lost track of how long it's been now, this arrangement of theirs.

Too long.

Tom sets his head against Bill's pillow as he works his hand up and down, palming the head, wrapping his hand down around and using the slickness to move his hand faster. He breathes deep, a little noise leaving his throat as he jerks it. He knows the taste of him, by accident more than design; knows the touch-sense of silken skin over minimal muscle, and he summons it up now. He gets off when Bill's in the shower every morning as he has for a while, doing it when the heat of Bill is still radiant in his sheets, on his abandoned pillow, raising the hairs on Tom's arms and legs.

He imagines Bill athwart his hips as he has been so many times as they wrestle, breathless and laughing. In his mind's eye Bill is naked, glorious and burning hotter than the sun that floods Tom's room by mid-afternoon. Their cocks are naked too in his little daydream, brushing against and past one another in a slow grind as Bill moves atop him in taunting hip rolls.

Tom cries out, twisting the head of his dick with an aggressive hand. He doesn't picture Bill _on_ his cock - no, _that_ would be going too far. He can imagine Bill touching him, looking down at him with eyes aroused as they are loving, licking his lip the way he does during concerts sometimes...

He knows exactly how many gut-churning thrusts of his hips it takes, how many hot sickening swoops of blood thundering through his ears will pass, and gasps as he pumps his cock in a shaking hand. Above him, a ghostly afterimage sings out his ecstasy above Tom as he moves, driving them both toward blissful conclusion and Tom's lips shape a single syllable, _Bill Bill Bill_ that dies in his throat. He'd bite his tongue off before he'd ever let it pass. He fucks ruthlessly into his fist and when the splash of warm release hits his thigh he imagines it's not his own.

Tom eases back down onto the sheets, opening his eyes and licking his lips. His back has bowed at the moment of climax and the rumpled sheets have slid down, exposing him. He tugs them back up as he cocks an ear at the silence; Bill's out of the shower by now, probably chasing the dogs away from his legs as he applies lotion. Tom licks his lips again and rolls away from the over-bright window, facing the open door.

He should get up and make them some coffee. He should clean himself up, get into his own shower.

He should stop sleeping with Bill.

Tom should do a lot of things, but he's pretty sure he's not going to start today. Only sleeping is bad enough, but he needs it, he tells himself. He needs it and it's something he can have, so why not? He props himself on one elbow just in time to catch Bill strolling down the hallway in a towel and nothing else, dogs bouncing and yipping at his heels.

"Tom, you--" Bill begins, his voice cresting loud enough to reach Tom if he were downstairs. He swings his head, looks over at Tom, and halts in the doorway. "Oh, Tom. You're still in bed."

"Yeah," Tom confirms. He's tempted to tug the sheets up over his head, go back to sleep maybe. Close out the sight of Bill all red-cheeked and relaxed-looking, as though he's worked out all his tension too.

Bill makes a noise in his throat. "Well, get up. The dogs..."

"In a minute," Tom says, groaning and face-planting onto his own pillow. It's safer. It doesn't smell so deliciously of Bill. He doesn't want to face the day, or late afternoon, rather. He definitely doesn't want to get up and walk all four dogs, whether one after the other or all in tandem.

"Tommm..." The demanding buzz-saw of his twin's voice cuts through all attempts to block out the world. Bill will never be ignored. "Why are you so grumpy, so sleepy?"

Tom tears the pillow away from his face and punches it a few times. "I don't know, maybe someone's bony little ass was keeping me up all night?" He widens his eyes, horrified at himself. That's not quite what he meant...Bill is active in bed... _fuck_ , no, he's an active sleeper.

And that's all Tom has any right to know. Technically he shouldn't know that much.

He sits up and fusses with the sheet. "You have your own bed, you know," he tells Bill, who's looking at him with an unreadable expression. At first it was homesickness; they were both so young, always away from home, they only had each other. Then it was a comfort thing. They got their own place, Bill gleefully selected his own room, painted it, ordered an enormous Western bed...and turned up on Tom's doorstep that night.

"I can't sleep," he'd explained, a fleece blanket over his shoulders, all huge eyes and woebegone pout.

"Okay," Tom had replied, peeling the covers back after a moment of hesitance.

"No one has to know," Bill had continued, clutching at his fleece as though for comfort.

Tom had patted the bed in response. "It's no one's business but ours."

Now they have dogs, and all six of them sleep in one big puppy pile at night. And Bill's enormous bed is perpetually unused.

"I know that," Bill says haughtily, and breezes off with his nose in the air.

Tom scowls.

As childish retaliation, he loiters in bed for twenty minutes longer until he can no longer bear the sensation of come drying tacky and gross against his thigh. He misses the dogs. He's not enjoying the silence.

He misses Bill, and he doesn't care if it's co-dependent or pathetic, he's going to get up and pull himself together. He's going to find his twin, if not exactly to apologize then to share the same space, get the two of them back into their orbit.

Tom scrubs himself down, not long enough to have another wank but plenty of time to consider it. He can't put off going downstairs any longer. Excited little barks, coffee smells, and the prospect of the first post-waking cigarette lure him down.

Bill's smile anchors him, keeps him from throwing in the towel and going back to bed.

Tom stalks downstairs with a glower fixed in place, angry over the rut they're in. He can't keep doing this to himself. It's a dead end, a ticket to nowhere. He's gotten himself into a self-destructive cycle, letting him imagine something that never should have gotten this far.

"Hey," Bill says, tugging at Tom's dreadlocks as they pass like ships by the kitchen island. He's smiling, soft with morning pliancy though it's some time pushing toward evening.

Tom grunts at him, making a beeline for the row of coffee cups, the machine that has finished burbling through the last of its percolation cycle. He brushes against Bill and the touch zings through him. When he glances over at Bill's face, his twin's eyes are wide but not startled.

"What?" Tom mumbles, catching onto the fact that Bill was speaking to him.

Bill touches the corners of his own mouth, as though to tug his lips into the smile he'd model for Tom. "Let's have a good day, okay?"

Tom nods response, his lips twitching. This is his failure. It's on him. So it's his job to fix it; he can't let it affect Bill, or the way he relates to his twin.

He gives Bill a grin that he doesn't feel, pours the coffee, lifts his cup in a silent promise. "Let's make some music," he says.

Bill's smile is all the response that Tom ever needs.


	2. Watching

Bill imagines kissing his brother in the luminous slant of morning light when Tom's resistance would crumble before the onslaught of what they know to be right between them. It's a fond fantasy, one that chases him from bed into the steamy embrace of the shower where he can lean against wet tiles and project his desires into the steady motion of his right hand.

Coming is like waking up. With a startled gasp he flies apart, only to pull himself back together again.

They go through the motions of every day wanting, and Bill wonders if he's the only one who sees it. They have their schedule, their little rituals, their work penned in between more work and some play, laughing as they mess up a jam session, egging the dogs on to chase one another with excited yips and flailing tails, throwing pizza crusts that results in whiny demands to quit from Bill, who hasn't gotten used to the care of his new black and silver dreadlocks yet.

Bill notices the looks Tom gives him, because he's sneaking glances of his own.

They're the same in this as they are in more ways than Tom cares to admit, Bill knows. The same blood, the same cells.

He can't remember a time without wondering what it would be like: touching Tom, at first, soft gentle exploration of fingers before tongue comes into play; spreading skin against skin, naked and catching fire with the first gleam of sweat, watching the tip of Tom's tongue dwell on his lips, eyes watchful as hardness nudges against acutely aching hardness.

What has been going on lately is different. Bill is pushing himself to see how close he can get to the line; he's daring himself, and he's teasing Tom.

They get home late that night after a schedule overstuffed with band meetings, boring meeting rooms however exquisitely appointed and well-catered, studio time that they have to get in because it's paid and the question keeps surfacing, ever-present. When does the new album come out?

Sometimes Bill wants to snap, _when it's ready._ Tom's foot taps against his during those moments and Bill rolls his eyes but manages to deliver a gentler answer.

"Oh, my babies, I missed you!" Bill tells their dogs effusively, bending to gather up double armfuls of excited dog. Tom's already got a leash dangling from one hand and it's good that they have this, Bill thinks. Another ritual, an act to keep them grounded. Love unconditional, because even Tom's love places expectations on Bill, as he knows his own love for Tom can make his brother feel confined.

Now Tom's reminded him that he has his own bed, as though Bill doesn't know it.

As though Tom wasn't the one to welcome him into his, to begin with.

Bill plays with the dogs in their yard until the lure of food takes them from his side.

He glances at Tom as he goes past the kitchen, a visual check. It's as though so long as he knows where Tom is, all is right with the world. It's a reflexive look and he barely takes in Tom's nod of acknowledgment, checking in on him in return.

Bill goes to his room and swings the door wide, staring at the big, empty bed. He's filled with venom; he's filled with vigor. He strips most of his clothes off and wades onto the pristine duvet, flooded with all of the thoughts that wrap around him in the mornings along with shower steam. He tugs his boxers down to his knees, and it's less summoning up thoughts of Tom than it is lowering the barrier that prevents him thinking of him constantly. He cups himself in one hand, barely moving it as he trembles, looking down and watching himself harden.

Tom, he thinks; and the raw look in his brother's eyes from that morning is vivid in his eyes.

Bill is certain about this as he is with all of the major truths in his life. He knows Tom, the flex of his jaw, the scent that rises from his skin when Bill's fresh out of the shower and Tom has stayed late abed, the sidelong dart of his eyes as his tongue plies unrealized at his lip. He recognizes the way Tom's eyes _don't_ look, because if it didn't matter, he'd have no trouble keeping his eyes on Bill.

It makes him want to laugh, sometimes. All this time, the same life, the same love.

The door is still open when Bill spills onto his side, hand working with more surety now as wetness comes from the tip, enough to thumb around, slick into his palm and really _go_ , frotting into his hand and imagining all of the things he'd like to do, someday. It's not as though he's kept himself pure, exactly. But there are places no one has gone before.

He's loud and getting louder as he rolls onto his back and works his dick into the tight clench of his hand, forming a tunnel with thumb and fingers that is enough, it's good, _almost..._

The sound of footsteps is not hesitant, but Tom doesn't exactly approach with a heavy tread.

There are ground rules, long unspoken but no less inviolable for that. They get off in private, unseen and unheard. Bill's never had to put up with seeing his brother after an easy lay and Tom hasn't heard him masturbate – or if he has, he's never said.

Bill is breaking this particular rule right now and screaming his defiance as he does so.

Bill gasps, bites his lip, and the muscles in his thighs jump as he jerks up into his hand, actually lifting his hips up off the bed as his hand moves faster. In his peripheral vision, he can see now. Tom is standing in the doorway, one hand lifted to grip the frame.

"Oh," Bill gasps out, breathy, and the knowledge that Tom is watching him, that he is _right there_ , that he's standing there speechless watching Bill beat off is a rush of near-painful arousal. His cock flexes and Bill cries out louder, rotating his hips against air, fucking into his hand merciless enough to abrade something. He bounces his cock against his stomach, moans, and twists his wrist to curl precome-slicked fingers around the sensitive exposed head.

At the corner of his eye, Bill sees Tom do the nervous lip-flick with his tongue.

That does it.

"Ah, god," Bill wails, arching up harder, and comes into his hand.

Panting, he lowers back onto the bed, trembling. The atmosphere is heavy, coursing with the kind of electric charge that presages a fight – or fucking. Bill's not sure which but he knows enough to recognize that much.

His head moving on a lazy axis, he lolls around to give Tom an insolent, heavy-lidded stare.

"What the fuck," Tom spits, his entire body stiff. His knuckles are white where he grasps the door frame and there's white around his brown irises.

"Didn't you want me to use my own bed?" Bill asks him, tipping onto his side and stroking at his own hip.

There's a fire in Tom's eyes, and for a shuddering instant, Bill is sure that it will burn him.

"Not...you don't...shit, Bill, you know what I meant!" Tom finishes incoherently.

Bill holds Tom's eyes, cupping his come-sticky hand over his spent genitals. "You see something you like?" the blurring effect of sex still coursing through his limbs makes him bold enough to say.

"Jesus, Bill," Tom snaps, jolted by that comment into action at last. He stretches forward to seize the door knob.

He's not unaffected by Bill's little show; that thought stuns Bill as his eyes are drawn to the core of Tom and the prominent outline of an erection jutting out the front of his sweats.

"If you're going to rub one out, the least you can do is keep your door shut," Tom continues, going red in the face as he does when he's angry – or overwhelmingly aroused.

Bill tugs his boxers up enough to hide his softening cock and licks his lip, tasting sweat. He's still anxious in a way he can't define, pent-up, feeling good in the wake of his release but still needy. "You like to watch me," Bill says, and rather than a slip of the tongue he knew this one was coming; more deliberate challenge than faux pas.

Tom stands there, his mouth elongating, and doesn't deny it.

If they were playing chicken, Tom's just flinched. Bill licks his lips again, adding, "You can join me any time," he invites. Still looking into Tom's eyes, he lifts a hand to pop a finger into his mouth. "I'd share anything of mine with you."

Tom wheels and slams Bill's door without another word, making him jump.

Bill sprawls back in his big, empty, lonely bed and squeezes his thighs together. He wants to scream again, but he laughs instead. It's shaky, though, not nearly so assured as he wants to be.

He needs something. He needs to get laid. He needs a body beside him. He needs a love to share every facet of his heart. He needs to keep everyone at a distance, for fear they'd sneak in somehow between him and the central vein of his heart, Tom; someone else to give him emotion and experience he doesn't want to give to anyone else.

He _needs_ , is the point. So much. There's only one person who's never turned him away.

If Tom denies him now, Bill thinks, it will break him. He's risking so much. It's their _everything,_ and yet he wants more.

He would give Tom anything, yet there's a terrified child at the core of him that is convinced that Tom can't - won't - do the same.

Bill _needs_ , but is unable to take what has to be given.


	3. Mirroring

Bill always has to up the stakes. He can't leave things alone.

Tom knows this and he still falls into the trap.

Bill's always the one to push, he's their initial impetus for everything, but Tom's the one to keep it going. This time Tom is not going to keep going on the weird path they've found themselves on.

There's no good response for it, what Bill's done and Tom has been party to – the time for a reasonable response, what someone would consider a normal response, has come and gone. Tom stood in the doorway with his mouth gaping slack when he should have kept shuffling onward. What little high ground there might have been is a smear of burnt rubber on tar.

He avoids Bill for the rest of the evening even though that's not the best response, either. Withdrawal makes Bill think he's won; confrontation makes him think he's on to something and only needs to push harder. At least with avoidance, Tom won't have to confront his own reactions.

He wants to taste that skin spread out like a banquet for his eyes. He wants to rub the head of his cock over those sweat-dewed pale thighs. He wants to run his hands, his tongue, his _teeth_ over all that naked gleaming skin and leave a tangible mark.

Tom closes his eyes and shoves back from his computer desk, rising to seek out a dog who wants to go for a run. So much for avoidance letting him put aside his dirty recollections.

By two a.m., Tom's convinced himself that Bill's little show earlier was a taunt, putting him on notice. They'll go back to separate beds now, separate walls to compartmentalize the desire that never should have sprung up to being with, no matter how beautiful Bill has become to him. Separate selves, not allowed to share this, Tom's wanting the nonexistent. He's projecting, he thinks.

He makes a nest for himself in the sheets of his own empty bed and tries not to think how he'll sleep with the silence breathing all around him like a hollowed beast.

Bill's made his point, Tom thinks. He won't show up tonight.

It's like Tom doesn't know Bill at all.

The roots of self-denial run only so deep and Tom's eyelids fly apart as the creak of the door presages a furry pack of bodies. He looks everywhere but Bill as his twin slinks through the door, stripped down to his boxers, pale as moonlight's gleam in the blind-shrouded dark.

"I thought--" Tom starts, and stops, and wets his lip with his tongue.

Bill arches a dark brow and climbs onto the bed in a crackle of quiet that rattles up Tom's nerves like heat lightning.

It's the flare before the lash of thunder. Something's going to happen. The only data Tom's lacking is _when_.

Tom grunts and rolls onto his back when Bill eases between the sheets like a seal slipping into welcoming water. Their thighs touch, press together in a long line of heat and Tom doesn't stop to wonder whether it's deliberate or part of the collision course of their natural closeness. He yelps like a virgin getting her first grope on prom night and jerks away.

"Jesus, Tom, don't make it weird or anything," Bill says, mocking, as Tom snatches his bare leg away from Bill's.

"You are...but I thought...we can't both...but, but..."

"But, but," Bill mimics, settling onto the pillow that is his for all intents and purposes. "It's no one's business but ours, right? We have a busy day tomorrow, Tomi. I need to be able to sleep."

The nickname disarms him, as Bill must have known it would.

He sighs, settles down. They don't touch again as they make the little movements to situate themselves in comfort in Tom's bed. Their bed.

Tom can't sleep, though. Or at least, thinks he can't until four throats are barking him awake and he twitches, surfacing into consciousness and giving a fuzzy blink for his surroundings.

The dogs are off baying at some corner of the house that requires canine presence, leaving Tom adrift in bed, watching moonlight pool on Bill's skin.

They're both stripped down to boxers, as per the status quo.

Tom can't stop thinking about Bill's mouth. He visualizes so clearly on constant replay, the full curve of it stretched around his own thumb, prisoning the digit and licking it clean of fluid.

Bill's eyes are dark, waiting, and Tom can feel them without even looking his way. He does anyhow. Bill's mouth is turned down at the corners. He can read what Bill wants from a single look, as always.

"Fuck it," Tom mutters. His skin prickles with unbearable expectation and he can't stand it anymore. He shoves his boxers down his hips and stops, getting up on his elbows. His arched brow spans the space between them, mute challenge.

Bill's frown upends into a sheer delighted smile. He says nothing, only lifts his hips and daintily, fussily peels his boxers down thighs that are so pale they compete with the sheets for starkness.

Tom licks his lips, heaviness settling in his belly. The moment is hinged over a fragile Pandora's box of expectations and one wrong move could bust it wide open for both of them. He's never been so nervous, not even facing down his first time.

His cock is already hardening along one thigh as he reaches for it. He's not looking down, though; he's looking at Bill as he wraps a hand around his half-hardened erection and jacks it to fullness.

Bill bites his lip, eyes low on Tom's body as he reaches for his own arousal as the blood-rush reaction hits, draining sense and inhibition. His hand moves slow at first but speeds up, matching the pace of Tom's hand on his own needy sex.

 _It's okay,_ the thought filters through Tom's hind brain, as higher function is sloughed off for pleasure's sake. They're not touching. They're only an echo, each mimicking the other, a dirty version of Simon Says.

His hand moves faster as his breath does. Tom's eyes skitter from Bill's long fingers wrapped around his thickening cock to his eyes, half-closed and all scorching demand.

More, Bill's eyes are telling him.

Without thinking, Tom rolls onto one side to face Bill. He has to shift his grip to keep wanking his cock. The moan that leaves his mouth surprises him.

Bill's pouty lips pull into a frown as he copies the move, an arm half trapped under him. He has to switch hands and the one that's not his primary is tugging at his dick now, the blood-rush contrast flushed against the milky skin of his belly.

Something low in Tom's stomach sparks. Tom eyes Bill raptly, absorbed in watching Bill stroke off and watch him in turn, and marvels that they haven't done this before.

There's nothing wrong with this; it's brilliant, two guys getting off, no one to judge or call them on it...it's the two of them, in the warmth and dark and near-silence of their cocoon. Exclusive, as they always are. Together, as they're intended.

Bill folds one leg up, pushing against the mattress to give himself leverage as he ruts into his hand and the yield of the bedclothes beneath him.

Open-mouthed, Tom can only watch in sheer admiration for an instant before the glint in Bill's eyes reminds him what they're doing. He re-positions himself, angling his aching cock to push against the bed as well as his hand. It's been awhile since he tried something new, masturbation-wise, and the way the cloth catches and slips against his hot-pulsing dick is amazing.

Bill's mouth is open, too, and quick excited little sounds rise from him along with the rough panting of his irregular breaths. His hand goes slower, stroking down from his shaft to cup his balls against his body.

Tom's hand follows the gesture. As he does so, he marvels at how his own jerk-off sessions have become a study in economy, thrusting fast and steady into his own hand until climax, turning it into an exercise that is all about the end, the rush of orgasm, and less about the means and making it enjoyable on the way there. Bill is seducing Tom into exploring his own body, using his as both example and lure.

A noise breaks free of Bill's throat as though he'll speak, cleaving the chain of silence that allows this to happen.

Tom shakes his head, biting his lip. After a split second Bill echoes the gesture with reluctance, his dark eyes etched in sadness.

As he dwells in Bill's eyes, Tom thinks back to the last time they played the mirror game, eight years old, before Bill cut his hair. Back when everything was the same. Bill changed it, becoming different from him, and Tom wouldn't play the mirror game anymore after that.

We're not the same, Tom recalls the rush of hurt that had eclipsed all other sentiment.

 _What are we doing?_ the thought surfaces at last, and Tom looks at the scene outside of himself, at his own stupid low grunting as he makes cow eyes at Bill while they jack off, separated by not nearly enough space. His braced leg slips and knocks against Bill's calf, long toes slipping down Bill's leg in an unintentional caress.

With a surprised cry Bill is stiffening, spanning his long, lean body out over the sheets and Tom can't help himself, either.

He arches, too, coming harder than he's done in a long time. He watches in a kind of suspended horror as an enthusiastic gout of it escapes his fingers and splatters between them, hitting Bill's thigh.

It's the hottest thing he's ever done but it can't happen again, ever. Tom makes his mind up on the spot as to that fact as he watches Bill clean off his thigh with a fold of sheet; furtively stick a finger in his mouth when he thinks Tom's not looking.

Tom closes his eyes, lapses back onto his side of the bed, and pretends to sleep as the dogs pad back into their room and hunt out their accustomed places.

They're not the same. They can't give each other a lifetime. What they have now...this kind of closeness...nothing lasts forever. And Tom can't give something to Bill only to take it back later.

Better to never let him know it's his in the first place.


	4. Yearning

Bill stretches up from their shared bed with considerably greater cheer than the black mood that had a grip on him when he shuffled for Tom's room with resentful wariness the night before. The sheet drifts down his thighs in a snowy pile and he catches sight of Tom's face before he hurries off for his own bathroom. Giddy heat bubbles up in him; Bill can see Tom's frustration boiling under the surface, rising suddenly to consume him the way Bill saw Tom's orgasm overtake him, lightning-bolt swift. It's good, what they've done. It's amazing. It's what Bill's yearned for, but not all he wants for them. Not everything they could be, and it sets Bill alight with want. 

There is still more.

He showers, soaps himself up, throttles desire down. He pictures Tom's face and he doesn't have to _imagine_ it anymore; the quiver in his thighs, the sweat at his brow, temples, and through it all his eyes, a dark avid line they've drawn between them. Tom touches him at last, and Bill gets off. It gets him there now, taking no more than the remembrance of Tom's long toes brushing up his calf, the shudder that gripped his whole body, before Bill's transforming into a glittering cascade of pleasure buoyed up by slick tile. Water sweeps away the result of his raptured reminiscences.

They're going to the Maldives soon, and Bill has plans. Last night's encounter forges his so-recently formless hopes into a blade stuck between his ribs, Cupid's dart lodged hopelessly fast. He'll drag it over Tom's skin and share the scratch of this undeniable fever.

Bill's bold in thought, but not practice. He can spread his skin on display, set his body out as the lure, but he can't reach to cross this next line. He can only show Tom everything he is, and wait for Tom to reach for it.

Bill's forgotten what it's like to make the first move, physically at least.

As difficult as rejection is, to be spurned by _Tom_ , the one person who is the very heart of him, would shatter him.

They go through their routines that day. They squabble; Tom moves to punch him playfully when Bill makes a quip about eager dogs and groupies. There's a moment of freeze, a glint in Tom's eye. Life resumes.

That first day Tom grips the counter and says, "You know we can't--"

"Can't," Bill interrupts haughtily, "is for other people. They said we couldn't become famous. They said we couldn't break out past Magdeburg. They said we couldn't--"

"Right, I get it," Tom says, frown stagnating in dissatisfied lines.

"Are you going to give them one more thing?" Bill says softly. He hopes Tom remembers the people telling them they couldn't move in together, when they turned old enough to sign their own contracts instead of watching Simone put pen to paper on their behalf. They gave that notion the finger when they signed the lease on their first place together.

Freedom. No one will ever tell Bill what he can't do; not anymore.

Tom issues a grunt that is more lack of argument than agreement but Bill takes it for a yes, wrinkles his nose as he passes Tom on the way to the coffee, faces off with him for a moment. The corners of his mouth twitch.

"It's only awkward if you let it be," Bill reasons, quiet as he can be only with Tom.

Tom digs deep; finds a smile for him. "Bill," he returns. He reaches out, palms the side of Bill's head. "What am I going to do with you?"

Bill finds a matching smile, but his turns fast lascivious. "Oh, I don't know..." He has ideas; he lets them unravel across his face.

Tom hastily turns to occupy himself with coffee.

On the Maldives countdown they throw themselves into gear as though readying for tour. There's a lot to be done, a compressed timeline, calls to be made and details to be managed and clothes to be packed. There's always someone watching now, outside the house or everywhere they go.

Bill climbs into their bed every night regardless of risk, from the stalkers or lack of response from Tom. The first night Tom's facing away, presenting the solid unbreachable wall of his back. When Bill sticks his hand down his own boxers Tom flops around like a landed fish.

"Bill, stop!" Tom hisses, eyes wild with white even in near dark.

"I'm not doing anything," Bill replies, all innocence. It's the 'I'm-not-touching-you' game with a new twist.

"You're jerking off right next to me," Tom returns, blunt about it.

"And you like it," Bill is quick to remind.

Tom's breath catches; resumes. They settle down. After a long moment of watching Bill watch him, he caves in to silent pressure and thrusts his hand down his boxers like a challenge Bill's only too happy to answer.

He watches Tom's face in the dark hours and would repel dawn if he could, to have that much longer. Tom watches him in turn and there's a yearning to his look that Bill wants to answer.

They do it every night before they pack their bags, but it's not a release of tension. It's a winding up, making the line snap taut between them, gathering everything along a single filament that is ready to break. Bill wonders where Tom's snapping point is. He'll share everything with Tom; he's given him mind and heart, and body is only the next inevitable step. It seems like Tom needs more to get there.

The Maldives are hot and Bill is irritable, blinkering himself with sunglasses that cover half his face and coping with the unaccustomed mass of dreadlocks piled against his hot, sweaty nape. He has tried to slip a single-bed booking arrangement past Tom, but his twin corrects it during check-in with a loud laugh and the ring of the general proclamation, "We are brothers!" 

The arid fierceness is an unwelcome slap to the senses. Bill finds himself more wound up on the back deck of their bungalow, shading his eyes and contemplating the vast impermanence of coruscating blue ocean, than he was before with stalkers outside the window.

When he slips between the sheets that night he wants nothing between them.

Tom rolls toward him open-mouthed, protests dying unsaid on his lips as Bill sprawls beside him as though ready to model for the lovemaking of pencil to acid-free paper. His voice is a starved burst of sound. "Bill--"

Bill dips one shoulder in a shrug. "It's hot."

"You're hot," Tom says, and looks surprised at himself. "You want to burn me up?"

"I want to roll around in our ashes," Bill whispers. He trails a finger down from the hollow between his collarbones along his nude front, watches Tom's eyes follow. Every part of him is an invitation for touch.

He needs Tom to cross the line he's drawn, for both of them.

"Bill," Tom says again, as though it holds the answer to an enigma he's become.

Bill thinks he's being very straightforward.

He pushes his hips up, making his hardness jut, all arching blood-red glory, against the sail of the sheets on which they're both adrift. He looks away, cutting Tom loose from the weight of their gaze. He waits, counting heartbeats.

Tom's hand reaches out.

Long fingers wrap around his aching cock and the triumph of sensation prises a low, eager moan from his throat. Bill stills – that doesn't even sound like him.

"What are you doing to me?" Tom whispers, sounding mesmerized. His voice could fragment gravel.

"We're not doing anything wrong," Bill insists.

"What are we doing, then?" Tom prods. His hand rises and falls, continuing to coax Bill's desire to full height.

"Masturbating," Bill says, breathing hotly on Tom's ear. In a sudden move he's all action now, released by Tom's hand. He sits astride him and savors the startlement on Tom's face, surprise fast giving way to an urgency he's come to recognize. He finesses Tom's hot, wet tip from the slit of his boxers and palms it, loving the feel, getting a perverse thrill over the exact ways in which they're alike. He breathes in Tom's ear, "We're the same blood, the same cells... This is the same as you touching yourself."

Tom tries to push him away, then, but Bill has him by the underbits and he's not letting go. He strokes Tom until his face goes slack with pleasure. They're both shaking with it, the bottled-up frustration. Weeks. _Years_. So long wanting, Bill's moving now to give them the rest of what they've held back.

Tom's fierce scowl makes Bill bump their foreheads together. "Easy," he says, or whimpers, because Tom has a good grip on him and he's pulling the orgasm right up out of the roots of his psyche.

Tom's eyes flash up at Bill. He looks furious, his face dark. His tongue runs over his lip, concentrating, nervous. He doesn't respond to Bill's delighted smile. Instead he surges up, bumping noses and knocking their mouths together in a collision of teeth and panting breath. His tongue thrusts into Bill's mouth, lithe, conquering. _I'll make you_ , Tom's kiss says, and Bill can only lay himself open in answer. He wants to roll over and give Tom everything.

Tom lurches in his grip and comes, plunging into Bill's mouth in a more thorough kiss than Bill has ever received.

Bill's making little noises in his throat, anxious, and he can't remember to breathe and kiss at the same time as his entire body collapses into a single point, sun-molten mass contracting in the instant before nova. Tom's mouth is on his, an agile tongue drawing back only to stroke in with slow surety as his hand speeds up on Bill's cock before matching the pace of his tongue, demanding.

With a rapturous cry against Tom's mouth, Bill comes.

Tom's come is still warm on Bill's fingers when Tom says, adamant in his ear, "We can't do this again. Ever."

Bill shoves him; climbs off Tom's lap to collapse onto sheets redolent now with their mingled scent. He puts his hands over his face but can't hold himself together; can't keep from shattering along the fault lines struck by the most intimate hurt to which he's ever been subjected. He makes a small sound before his throat squeezes shut. The wound is too raw to cry over.

In silence, Tom gets up. He leaves their bed, leaves the room. Leaves Bill empty.

Tom is everything; now Bill is nothing.


	5. Breaking

Tom gets three steps through the door before he wants to go back again. He's left like he's fleeing the scene of a crime and the hurt on Bill's face is a shock to his senses, the looming pain greater than his own self-disgust. He takes a moment; squares his shoulders. Turns around to go back though his skin crawls along the length of him for a shower. He can't do this to Bill. To them.

Folded up small on the mass of white sheets, Bill's sitting up now with his head between his knees. It's an old posture, what he'd do to stall off a panic attack when he's about to perform, and Tom's heart lurches like clockwork given a brutal tweak.

This is what he's done to them, and he has to make it right.

"Hey," Tom says, setting a hand to Bill's tousled black hair, sitting beside him, ignoring naked skin and the linger of sex-reek. This is beyond the physical now, placing Tom on surer ground.

Bill sniffs heavily. "You were gone."

"I missed you," Tom says, and in that is the undercurrent of everything he doesn't say; how he misses what they were, without this tension between them. How he can't go one breath without knowing where Bill is, how he's anxious when Bill is out of his sight, no matter how safe, no matter how near.

How Tom bears the weight of what they are in order for Bill to realize his dreams. Somewhere along the way, their selves have become so insular, so self-contained, they've confused closeness for the last layer of intimacy. Tom misses his brother, too used to exposure to other facets of Bill.

Gravitating toward him like a sun-starved flower for light, Bill collapses against his shoulder. "I missed you," he returns, voice hoarse as though he's smoked a pack of cigarettes.

Tom is silent then, and strokes Bill's hair. He holds Bill until he's lapsed into sleep. Only then does he get up, has a furtive smoke outside on the cool wind-blown balcony, showers off the scent of Bill that perfumes his skin.

The next day Bill tries to sulk and Tom's not letting him.

One would think, after a 'no' of that caliber, Tom should keep his distance, give Bill his space. But they aren't 'one;' they're twins, and Tom is going to bind them to the closeness they ought to be while Bill tries to put distance between them.

He follows Bill everywhere like one of their puppies, knowing Bill's determined frown can't last in the face of such persistent devotion. He's on Bill's heels when he's in the kitchen getting coffee. He's sprawling beside him when Bill lies out for a moment on the deck. He's seating himself in all nonchalance at Bill's feet when Bill flips on the big-screen TV to check out the programming.

Tom doesn't hesitate to touch Bill in the ways he has before, a squeeze to the shoulder, elbows bumping, pat to the knee. It's the new track that derailed him the night before that Tom is determined to avoid from now on.

"God, Tom, what do you want?" Bill snaps at last, as he turns around in the bathroom only to be hip-checked, Tom's that close.

Tom tosses a pair of trunks to the counter. "Let's go swimming," he invites. "We didn't come here to stay cooped up in the bungalow all week."

"Tom, I don't feel like it," Bill complains, arms folding, incipient sulk hovering like tropic-swift rainclouds.

Tom shrugs. "All right, I'll go..."

He puts on his trunks in the other room, grabs his keys, his towel. He tries to shunt aside the ache, the hollowness at his core, the void within that calls for completion with Bill as his everything as the answer. That way lies their lover's suicide, the death of every other bright ambition or future glory in their lives. What he wants is only pure in its selfishness.

Tom walks out the door and counts heartbeats.

His own are speeding up, playing percussion to the rhythm of anxiety until Bill's hand smacks his shoulder.

"You didn't really think you were going without me, did you?" Bill challenges, expressionless.

Tom offers up an assured grin as his heart settles back where it should be in his ribs. "Only wanted to see how long it would take," he claims.

"I'm not in the mood for swimming," Bill states.

Tom shrugs. "These take hours to dry," he says, gesturing to the dreads he's secured atop his head like a warrior crest.

"So I'm finding out," Bill says, rueful, taking a handful of his mixed black and silver extensions.

They wade out into knee-splashes of turquoise waves that lap against their legs, cooler than Tom expected. He hangs back a bit, lets Bill set the pace, and tries not to let melancholy consume him as Bill looks everywhere but him. Tom's set them back on this track; he's going to see it through until Bill is past mistaking one closeness for the other.

"Stop hovering," Bill says at last, turning with a fierce squint. They've both forgotten their sunglasses on the towels they left onshore.

There are a thousand different ways for Tom to communicate with Bill, to get his point across. He is terrible at subtle.

"You're mad," he says simply.

"Of course I'm fucking mad," Bill says, holding himself with the stiff indignation of a cat half-immersed in water. "What do you want from me, Tom?"

"What I've always wanted; I want you to be happy," Tom says, frowning. He lost sight of that for his own self-gratification.

Bill is silent for a long moment. "That's going to take a while," he says, and rubs a hand down his left side. He surges toward shore, founders a moment while he's out of reach, plows onward with the single-minded stubbornness that accompanies all his endeavors.

Tom looks to the horizon, to the place where sea and sky fold together. He is tiny, he is a speck. He's unimportant. All he can do is hurt and disappoint the ones he loves.

He doesn't know if he can make Bill happy again.

He knows he has to _try_.

When he joins Bill, who's sprawled out on the beach at the water's edge, there's a tension in the way that Bill glances up and away, settled on his elbows as he stares at the distant merging of atmosphere and ocean. It crushes Tom that the same thoughts are likely passing through Bill's, as well.

"You want something to drink?" Tom asks, crouching beside Bill, brushing his fingers through wet sand.

"I want you," the words escape Bill, and he bites his lip, and he regards the waves eating up shoreline, nibbling his toes.

Tom takes a breath. "You have me," he assures Bill.

Bill flicks a hand at him as though waving him away. His head turns; the opacity of his sunglasses are a mirror of Tom's darkest desires. "You know what I want."

Tom looks down the beach, spots a camera pointed their way, and curses under his breath.

"There's a limit to what anyone's allowed to have."

He gathers himself and gets up.

Tom doesn't go far, though. He gets a drink; he craves a surreptitious smoke. He puts enough distance between them to remind himself that camera and all those like it are why there's one last line uncrossed between them.

Same as ever, Tom wants what Bill does. The difference is what Tom will do to keep them safe.

When the baking heat of afternoon presses down like a vengeful hammer from the sky, they retire to the bungalow. Tom is ready to rummage through the fridge or pick up the house phone to order food delivered. He turns his head, an autonomic reflex, checking on where Bill is, respective to his own position; like breathing, he doesn't think, only does.

Bill is standing forlorn in the entryway, one arm clutched across his chest.

Tom puts his towel down and returns to Bill. "Hey, what is it?"

"I miss you," Bill says after a moment. His eyes are bright but he's not smiling.

Tom wants to reach for him but that coiling voltage is in the air again, ozone scattering before the charge of impact. He wets his lips; he hovers. He knows what Bill wants to say like the thought rises unbidden in his own mind. "I'm right here."

"Love me." Bill's demand is a subliminal murmur, an impulse reverberating in his smallest bones, resonating along Tom's empty spaces.

Tom wants to answer so badly that all he can do is shake his head and take a step back. That command is all eros, slick bodies striving together and passion-heaving breath, sweat sealing them and everything bright and beautiful given over to the stain of Tom's weakness, his self-gratification.

"You don't...love me?"

This is the crucial moment; everything from this point hinges around it. In order to lie to Bill, Tom has to lie to _himself_.

"I love you more than anyone in the world," Tom says, locking onto and holding the gaze of identical brown eyes. "How can you ask me that? You're my twin, my brother, my Bill." He reaches out, knuckles brushing along the wing of a collarbone in a caress more simple affection than loverly and holds his palm over Bill's heart.

Bill's anguished gaze holds for a moment, rendered agonizing by the frantic hummingbird beat of Tom's own heart, until those beautiful eyes devolve into a grudging acceptance.

"I love you," Tom repeats with a brotherly little smile, that part of him that wants to make it something more locked away and battering at his self control.

Bill looks at him, searching his face, his eyes. If he's slow to resign himself it's because Tom is, too.

"You _want_ me--" he begins, tone argumentative.

"Only because we're so damned handsome," Tom replies with a cocky grin. "It's narcissism taken to the natural conclusion. That's why we can't, Bill – that's self-destruction. That's not...the sex aspect, that's not how we love each other."

Bill's eyes flare defiance louder than a shout. "That's not--" he begins to protest, and surges forward. "I'll show you."

He's going to kiss him, and in that most blatant surrender Tom may unravel.

Tom catches Bill by the upper arms; holds him close when Bill twists and struggles with him, ducks his head in with predatory intent. When he calms, still huffing his angry pent-up breaths over being denied, Tom swoops in and places a single, chaste kiss beside Bill's mouth.

This is all they can have.

"It's not...this isn't..." Tom shakes his head, lifts Bill's hand and sets it over his slowly-thudding heart. "This is _all_ we are."

Bill shakes his head until dreadlock extensions cut Tom's skin. He makes a wounded noise, anger rumbling from the depths of him. "Because the world won't let us--"

"No," Tom interrupts. "Because I won't."

Bill stares at him for a long time, his eyes searching Tom's for clues as to where they'll go next.

Tom strums a hand up Bill's left side, each fingertip dwelling over the raised scrolls of swooping script. They'll go back to the beginning, where they both belong.

"Okay," Bill says at last, and in his eyes there's a spark of desolation before his expression compresses, shutters, becoming opaque like the reflection of Tom's resolve.

"Okay?" Tom says, to be sure.

Bill disengages from Tom's grasp. His face is no longer a mirror, for Tom's mask or his soul. It's merely blank. "We'll see," he replies.

This time Bill's the one who leaves.

Outside is sweltering heat; inside, the recriminations of silence. Tom can't get settled. He paces. He smokes another clandestine cigarette. He watches TV until he realizes he doesn't understand the broadcast language. He messes around with his cell phone.

He could be a jerk, go out to a club, find some pretty thing, charm his way into her bed. He thinks about that; he thinks about the stalkers who've shown things to their mom. Sick things, she said.

Things he would never do to Bill.

Should never.

Tom pulls at his hair and thinks of shaving it all off, lock by lock. Ten years gone. He could make a fresh start; new year, new album, new Tom.

He gets up and starts to pace again until he realizes his feet move with purpose. He's heading for Bill.

Tom's room is empty and it takes a moment to realize why. Bill's gone to his own.

He lurks in the doorway until Bill tells him to stop being an idiot; to come in.

Bill is a long white sand dune beneath the covers. "I figure," he says thickly, "I should get used to this."

Tom doesn't answer aloud; only nods. "Want some company for now, though?"

Silence passes in breath, in and out.

"Yes," the answer comes at last.

When Tom settles in bed Bill excavates himself, sits up, fits himself to Tom's front like they're puzzle pieces.

"What can I do?" Tom wants to know.

"Make me smile," Bill whispers, his cheek set against the cool plane of Tom's upper chest.

Tom pets Bill's hair and tells him stories.

He brings up stupid, silly anecdotes from their days in Loitsche. He recalls the first time they'd bullshitted an interviewer, and the rapid-fire patter they've engaged in ever since. He reminds Bill of all the little things they've been through and done; brings up afternoons spent side by side on a grassy hillock waiting for the bus while Bill sings that someday they'll go somewhere, be someones.

"You've always been someone to me," Tom says, stroking at a handful of black hair. "Always will be. Even when we're remember-whens."

The curve of Bill's smile against his pectoral is a tug to the heart.

"Tomi," Bill says, sleepy, pulling a sudden yawn. "I'm going to take a nap."

Tom eases himself out of Bill's clinging embrace and tucks the sheet around him. He doesn't say he loves him. He doesn't need to. It's in everything they do.

What Tom does now is the hardest measure of love; giving up what he wants so that Bill can be safe, have what he needs of someone else some day.

Tom finds his own room. He shuts the door. He locks and leans against it and he shudders to pieces. Bill is still on his skin, scent in his nose, murmur of the voice in his heart. Tom barely touches himself, cupping himself through his boxers, and he's hard already. It's paired hand in hand with guilt now.

He crawls into bed, shorts around his knees, and throttles his dick with a single-minded intensity that makes him collapse on his side in the welter of sheets, _their_ sheets, still imprinted with the fading remnants of Bill's scent. He doesn't even try not to think of Bill as he jerks his cock, but he does bite his lip to keep from crying out. Every heartbeat thuds _Bill, Bill, Bill,_ and the hand that shapes his desire could be Bill's, if he doesn't think too hard about it.

Desire is fleeting. It passes. Tom knows this, and knows even better that what he and Bill are is something more, beyond blood and cell and the orbit of electron to its lifemate molecule. He won't let Bill give him something so ephemeral.

He pulls at his cock. He thinks of his brother, his would-be lover, his everything. He thinks of Bill as he comes in that final, shining moment when everything hangs suspended, and anything is possible.

He wonders if he'll ever be able to think of anything else.


End file.
